Good to Talk: Animating Conversations
A blog from James Scott, CXO at Rapport
It’s good to talk. Readers of a certain age and from certain parts of the world will recognise this as the slogan Bob Hoskins uttered in a series of TV ads for British Telecom in the late 80s and early 90s. And while the ads themselves have aged very badly, the message remains valid. It’s good to talk. Because through talking, we establish deeper, more meaningful relationships.
The Evolution of Chatbots
Nearly 30 years on, methods of remote communication have evolved and reshaped our expectations dramatically. With the ability to correspond instantly through email, SMS, social media, and other messaging platforms, the pace of information and value exchange is higher than ever. But speed makes things blurry, and sometimes we human beings miss important points and forget our manners. So organisations of all kinds have been looking for ways to keep up with audience demand for convenience and clarity, and after a shaky start, chatbots have matured and become a more commonly accepted solution to the need for speed and consistency.
Stats from HubSpot survey.
But these qualities are table stakes. For the interaction to be truly valuable, it needs to resonate on a context-appropriate emotional level.
A shift towards the use of voice notes in a peer-to-peer setting is perhaps a reaction to the fact that nuance is so often lost when relying on text alone. Even emojis and gifs can be misinterpreted, with attempts at humour sometimes backfiring when perceived as sarcasm. Adding a voice into the equation allows us to imbue our messages with inflections that better support the intended tone.
Humanize Digital Communication
Albert Mehrabian’s research concluded that the efficacy of communication is 55% nonverbal, 38% vocal, and only 7% attributable to the words we use.
More recently, a UCL Study on changes in psychology in digital communication proved that full body visibility led to a 40% uplift in empathy.
So when we add an expressive face and visible physicality to our conversations, we have the best chance of establishing the level of trust required to achieve the most positive outcomes. Case in point, Prof Jim reported that the average exam score under human tutors was 61%, rising to 75% under subject-specific avatars (such as Abraham Lincoln teaching American History, and Jane Austen teaching English Literature).
Just Add Rapport!
Now, Rapport.cloud provides a platform on which to combine AI Large Language Models (LLMs) or branching dialogue solutions with text-to-speech, speech recognition and animated characters in any art style, to facilitate holistic verbal and non-verbal communication between humans and virtual interactive personalities (VIPs) in any language.
Without any coding skills, I can craft a no-code VIP experience and deploy it on the web in under 5 minutes. Imagine what you could do in an hour, a day or a 2-week sprint!
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Made in Minutes
Click the images below to try out some demos made using Rapport.
Madame Alara can help you decode your dreams
Vivian is powered by ChatGPT for an open conversation
CelluLloyd can help you choose a movie to watch
